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via onextrapixel.com

We women know that giving away our services for free is bad for business, just as we know saying yes to every invite and project at work is bad for our career. Both practices perpetuate the doormat syndrome.

While we’re developing our businesses and ramping up our careers, we speak at professional associations and networking groups for free because, as author and women's leadership expert Selena Rezvani writes here, the gold-standard belief is that our generosity will benefit our reputation and our pocketbook somewhere down the line.

In the course of a year, I’m asked, usually by women, to do a lot of these events at a rate of – you guessed it – zero dollars.

“We’re a non-profit,” some groups will say. “Our budget is miniscule,” others explain. Still others apply pressure with, “We’ve had years of speakers who were willing to do it for free.” Even so, “something” for “nothing” does not equate to a deal and these organizations need to take a closer look at what they’re asking of women.

If you are a member of a women’s professional organization or association, your mission statement likely states some variation of the following:

To advance the economic, social and political power of women in the world.

To develop members’ individual capacities for generating wealth through networking, strategic alliances, and professional development opportunities.

To advocate for public policies that benefit women and to collectively wield influence when the rights of women are threatened.

So far so good.

In general, these organizations don’t pay their speakers at professional development events or workshops, and often don’t source from the expertise of the membership to deliver programming, opting instead to “import” talent—those who’ve made it or published or broken the entrepreneurial mold.

They feature the regional and national rock stars of the women’s business world.

On its face this might seem to make sense. The organization needs to hit home runs and satisfy members and sponsors expectations. And one could argue that rock star speakers with books to sell would call speaking for free in exchange for selling books a fair deal.

Modeling Fairness and Parity

But for my money, the mission and the actions of the organization don’t square. We need our organizations to model at the level of our pocketbooks that what we do for a living is not only worth money, but a sustainable plank in one’s platform for business success.